Denmark's bang-it-up Safri Duo entertains Jakarta clubbers
Denmark's bang-it-up Safri Duo entertains Jakarta clubbers
Joseph Mangga, Contributor, Jakarta
Surveying the massive array of lighting and musical equipment
crowding Embassy's dance floor, it truly looked as if we were all
in for one hell of a show. Not just some inanimate DJ this time,
cloistered away in a shadowy DJ booth over a mixer and a couple
of barely visible turntables.
This was a huge stage with real instruments and real musicians
playing real live music! I truly love dancing to music mixed by
live DJs, but there is only so little that a DJ has at their
disposal to visually stimulate an audience. And this was a crowd
with high expectations that was in no mood for the ordinary!
For some strange reason I expected Safri Duo -- the samba
drum-bashing pair that's been conquering the global dance charts
with thermonuclear percussive proportions -- to be from Brazil.
In fact, they just had to be!
Everyone knows that the only really great percussionists on
the planet are either native-borne African tribal drummers,
transcendental tablas-pounding Indian or Pakistani mystics, who
play with the likes of Ravi Shankar or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, or
else South Americans that are simply popped from their mother's
loins with those infectious natural rhythms already pulsating
through their genitals and other bodily appendages.
The two young dudes on the cover of Episode (II) -- Safri
Duo's debut album (in fact, whatever happened to Episode (I)?) --
are just too damn white or blonde to be former spear-chucking
African bushmen or curry-snorting subcontinental music gurus, so
they just had to be from Brazil. But of course, they ain't!
This became more than apparent when the two new club-scene
darlings leapt onto the stage and introduced themselves as none
other than Uffe Savery and Morten Fritis. Big pause, please. I
don't recall too many similar-sounding names on Brazil's winning
team at the FIFA World Cup; but then again, there were more than
a few names like that on the Danish squad, which lost to England
in the second round.
Danes. Oh my God! And classically trained great ones at that!
Two dudes who beat their wares as child performers in the Tivoli
Garden Boys' Guard? Who then went on to play with the Denmark
Symphonic Orchestra at such prestigious venues as Carnegie Hall
and Royal Albert Hall? Who got their big break last summer from
DJ Judge Jules, who featured them at one of his Judgement Sunday
raves at Club Eden in Ibiza, and the crowd went absolutely
bonkers?
Denmark has never been a country known for its export of
quadruple-platinum-selling musical acts, let alone an instant
number one club classic like Played-A-Live (also known as The
Bongo Song), the song that has literally pounded it's way onto
virtually every single solitary dance floor on the known planet.
From it's deafening dueling-bongo duet opener to the contagious
carnival-like synthesizer trance-music theme that kicks-in later
- the live recording is a track guaranteed to send even the most
jaded of crowds into an instant uncontrollable frenzy.
And that's exactly the tune Safri Duo chose to open their two
-hour Embassy performance with, and exactly the same response
they got from the standing-room-only squeeze of nearly two-
thousand Indonesian clubbers. The roped-off area in front of the
stage was finally opened, then things really got interesting.
Each man was surrounded by an absolute armada of percussion:
Bongos, congas, sambas and tom toms; high-hats, kettles, timpani
and snares.
Savery and Fritis then proceeded to beat the living snot out
of anything that didn't move, including a large vibraphone, that
Savery consummately hammered on the songs A-Gusta and Baya Baya;
and six huge polyethylene tubes that Fritis repeatedly struck
with mousepad-covered ping-pong paddles to create the eerie and
echoing booming-effect, featured prominently on tracks like
Snakefood and Everything.
And these two were not alone in their musical mayhem. Also
giving their best was a young Danish keyboard virtuoso and a
rock-solid bass player. It was also the bassman's 27th birthday.
The Jakarta concert was the last stop on an Asia tour, that
also saw Safri Duo at Studio East in Bandung the previous
evening. On Monday, they all flew back to Denmark to prepare for
a Sept. 7 special engagement with French electronic music pioneer
Jean Michel Jarre; let alone promote their latest commercial
release, an inspiring cover of the Doobie Brothers' Sweet Freedom
that Jakarta was also gratefully treated to.
With over two million in total sales, several European MTV
awards and months of Played-A-Live at number one in the British
and U.S. dance charts, the big question is, what are these drum-
happy Danes going to do for an encore?
When that time finally came at Embassy, they apparently ran
out of material, so they finished up with a second bash through
Played-A-Live, but nobody seemed to notice. All I can say is that
y'all should of been there!